


with wax melted i'd meet the sea

by besselfcn



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, F/F, Mentions of Elias being a bastard man, Mentions of Jon/Martin, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26449522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: Melanie laughs, a hollow, scooped-out thing. Georgie remembers the bright and airy laugh that used to bubble out of the hostess ofGhost Hunt UK.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Melanie King
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38





	with wax melted i'd meet the sea

**Author's Note:**

> it is illegal to write an f/f fic without a hozier song title, i think
> 
> You can read this as a sequel to [vice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26143552/chapters/63605332), but you also don't have to, if that doesn't float your boat.

Again, Melanie says, “Sorry.”

“Shh,” Georgie soothes. She pours a heaping handful of shampoo on her hands — more than enough for Melanie’s little bob cut — and starts working it into Melanie’s scalp. “Shut up. You haven’t got anything to be sorry about.”

Outside, the sun is just barely cresting over the London skyline. Melanie shifts around in the tub, adjusting her weight, and the soft sloshing of the water echoes against the tile in the cramped little bathroom.

“Can’t be fun,” Melanie counters. “Waking up at half five with your girlfriend shouting like a banshee all the time.”

“Banshees are great,” Georgie tells her. “It’s all just podcast content, innit.”

Melanie laughs, a hollow, scooped-out thing. Georgie remembers the bright and airy laugh that used to bubble out of the hostess of _Ghost Hunt UK_. 

She fills a cup with the warm bath water and rinses out Melanie’s hair, careful to cup a hand over her forehead even though her lids rest shut most of the time now unless she consciously tries to open them. Melanie tips her head back with it: Georgie wants desperately to lean forward and press a kiss in the hollow between her collar bones.

 _You can_ , she realizes, so she does. 

“Sap,” Melanie murmurs, but there’s a smile at the edges of her mouth trying to make its way free. 

“Oh, I’m horrid,” Georgie admits. “Lavender-honey with little oat bits, or vanilla and cinnamon with big rose petal chunks?”

“You don’t just have _soap_?” Melanie groans. “Like, normal people soap?”

“No, all I’ve got is farmer’s market bullshit, I’m afraid.”

Melanie groans. “I’ll take the oatmeal.”

Georgie fits it in her palm and starts scrubbing at Melanie’s shoulders, pressing thumbs into the knotted up muscles to desperately try to release tension. Melanie sighs and leans back into it.

After a few moments of indulging herself in the happy little noises Melanie makes when she’s relaxing, Georgie says, “So.”

“So,” Melanie responds.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Melanie’s seven least favorite words on the planet, Georgie knows. Well, maybe behind _oh god so sorry I didn’t realize —_ , stammered out whenever anyone causes her the slightest inconvenience before noticing the cane. 

“I’m supposed to,” Melanie grumbles. Part of the compromise that landed her at the Barker residence and not an inpatient facility.

“You are supposed to,” Georgie agrees.

Melanie sighs. She fidgets her legs in the water. She rolls her neck back; her hair gets in some soap suds, and Georgie gently cleans it off. 

“Bad dream,” she finally says. 

“About?” 

She grimaces. “Who is it ever about?”

Something Georgie has learned that she suspects very little people know is how much fear does to temper anger. With fear, there is hesitation. There is restraint. There is the knowledge that you cannot let yourself be _consumed_ by the anger, or-else or what-if or lest-there-be. 

Without fear, there is rage so bright it scorches Georgie’s rib cage.

“I could kill him for you,” Georgie offers. She is impressed with the way she manages to keep her hands soft, her touches slow. 

Melanie scoffs. “Dunno how well you’d fare against Her Majesty’s royal prison,” she says. “And besides. I — well. Martin’s never really done anything wrong, has he.”

 _He didn’t follow you._ Georgie bites down on her own tongue. _He didn’t leave Jon to sit alone in the wreckage of his own making. He never fucking will._

“I dunno,” Melanie sighs. “Killing him wouldn’t help anyway, would it. I still get all the nightmares even without him putting them in there.”

That’s the thing Georgie misses about fear, she guesses. The rationality of it. The way it tells you what you can and can’t control. 

Melanie pays a therapist a hundred pounds an hour to talk about _choice_ and _agency_ and _reclaiming your autonomy._ Georgie dreams of tearing the Magnus Institute apart brick by sordid brick.

“You’re right,” Georgie tells her. “Always are. Now come on. Let’s get you back in bed.”

She shuffles Melanie out of the tub in a towel. They step sideways around the Admiral where he’s parked outside the bathroom door, Melanie giving him a pleasant little chirp when she hears the dinging of his new collar bell. Georgie deposits her, a warm little lavender-scented burrito, onto the bed with a kiss on the nose. 

“Pajamas,” Melanie demands, and Georgie complies. The pajamas are warm and soft and without any buttons; easy for Melanie to put on herself. She always makes Georgie do it instead. 

They get back under the covers just as the light begins to break through the curtains, but Georgie’s never had a problem sleeping in the daylight and Melanie, of course, couldn’t care less. Georgie kisses her again, just to feel the soft warmth of her mouth, the way she always feels like softly melted candle wax. 

As Georgie’s closing her eyes, she feels something dark and slick creep up in her stomach, an oily realization.

“Melanie?” she whispers.

“Mm?”

She stares at the soft freckled ridges of Melanie’s cheeks. “Can he still… see you? Do you think? Through me?”

She expects a jolt of fear; a flash of anger. 

Instead, Melanie yawns and rolls on her back, arms and legs stretched wide. “Probably,” she says. “Doubt he looks much, though.”

Georgie frowns. “Why?”

A smile breaks across her face. It’s fire-bright, a thing Georgie hasn’t seen in months. “Oh,” Melanie says, “he hates to lose.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me tweeting [@besselfcn](https://twitter.com/besselfcn).


End file.
